The 36-year-old Michael S. is accused of multiple cases of attempted murder for allegedly manipulating the gas connection and booby trapping his Dunckerstrasse 13 apartment in Berlin’s trendy Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood on July 18. Neighbors smelled the gas and called emergency services, who found that dozens of residents around the building were in danger.

The man had tampered with the gas connection and removed the glass from a light bulb. Had the light been turned on, an explosion would have inevitably occurred, police said.

He fled to Hamburg and was spotted in the city’s St. Pauli and Sternschanze districts, but police didn’t capture him until the early hours of Wednesday morning, the paper said.

The man was already known to police for getting into fights and damaging property.